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Early Education
Popper's student years were piecemeal. He left school without graduating at 16, and though it is commonly noted he studied math, physics and psychology at the University of Vienna, he did so as a guest student not formally enrolled (Popper 1976). After passing a matriculation exam he trained as a teacher, beginning a career in social work, and in 1929 he completed a PhD in Psychology through a special accessions route for social workers (ibid.).
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Popper, Karl. Unended Quest. Open Court, 1976. -
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Lifespan (1902—1994)
Popper was born in Vienna, but moved New Zealand to take an academic position at Canterbury University College in 1937 (Popper 1976). In 1946 he moved to the UK to take a position at LSE (ibid.), and died in Kenley, UK in 1994, at the age of 92 (The New York Times 1994). He reportedly worked on his philosophy until two weeks before his death.
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Popper, Karl. Unended Quest. Open Court, 1976.
The New York Times. Sir Karl Popper Is Dead at 92. Philosopher of 'Open Society'. 18 September 1994. -
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935)
In 1935 Popper published "Logik der Forschung", though the first English edition wasn't published until 1959. The book was published by the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, however, Popper, unlike some of his Vienna Circle contemporaries, did not believe non-scientific activities were meaningless. Rather, he sought to demarcate science and non-science due to his disapproval of pseudoscience.
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Popper, Karl. Logik der Forschung. Vienna, Julius Springer, 1935. -
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945)
In 1945, Popper published a two-volume work of political philosophy critiquing theories of teleological historicism. A discussion he returned to in “The Poverty of Historicism”, some 12 years later. On the one hand, the book is a critical work of philosophy focusing on the main ideas of select political philosophers. The second purpose of the book, however, is framing these criticisms with respect to the ‘open society’.
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Popper, Karl. The Open Society and its Enemies. London: Routledge, 1945. -
The Poverty of Historicism (1957)
In 1957, Popper wrote "The Poverty of Historicism". At its core, the book focused on a critical analysis of existing social science methodologies. He distinguishes between two strands of historicism: a pro-naturalistic approach, which refers to the tendency of social scientists to formulate predictive or explanatory "laws" akin to those seen in Physics, and an anti-naturalistic approach, which opposes said methods.
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Popper, Karl. The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge. 1957. -
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1962)
In this work, Popper argues that science cannot progress via the method of induction. That is, you cannot prove things to be true based on what has already been known. All you can do is prove things to be false, or not yet false. The following is a 1974 interview with Popper on science and absolute truth, discussing ideas presented in his book.
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Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Basic Books, 1962. -
Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972)
This work was a collection of essays on epistemology. Specifically, an analysis of the diffusion and evolution of scientific knowledge. Prior to Popper’s work, the traditional view was the idea that once scientific knowledge has been discovered and written down, it becomes ‘common sense’. Early on in the book, however, he claims common sense combines two theses that are fundamentally incompatible.
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Popper, Karl. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford University Press, 1972.